9.25.2011

I've been stumbling about trying to find something INTERESTING to blog and well .... sometimes inspiration is lacking. BUT, I did find in my intertent travels today this wonderful tumblr site called Bookshelf Porn which has THOUSANDS of photos of books and shelves and bookstuff. Some of my favorite book photos are on this site. It's overwhelming, I confess, to be confronted with so many images at one time of something that you love. Well, it's a bit like porn, I suppose ....

Recently, I've gone back to actually READING books, rather to just listening to them on tape. (Long convoluted story on why I stopped reading which I won't share.) So far I've read 18 books during the last two and half weeks. Most have been rather forgettable reads. Jodi Picoult's House Rules was an interesting look at Asperger's syndrome and its legal ramifications. Plus she had a great joke about a psychiatrist in it that I wish I had dog-eared to blog because it was very funny! The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins has been getting a lot of hype as it is being made into a movie (which will either be a really interesting thing or a train wreck of a motion picture). It's geared towards the Young Adult market and wasn't as gory and grim as I expected it to be. I'll probably wait for the video to come out. Jury is out on whether I will continue reading the entire series.

I want to amend this to say, "I HAVE a boy who will build me bookshelves."

A surprising read was The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton which turned out to be sort of a grown-up's version of my favorite childhood book, The Secret Garden. Lots of plot twists and turns! I'll probably look for another one of Morton's books next time I'm at the bookstore. I was disappointed with Rescue by my favorite author, Anita Shreve. It wasn't up to her usual standards. And similarly felt the same about State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, another fav author.

I've heard that Cutting for Stoneby Abraham Verghese is excellent, so it's on the list to read. If you have any additional recommendations, please feel free to comment. I'm always on the look-out for a great read.

15 comments:

Red, i have to warn you. i did a post a while back called "Smurf porn" and my site was getting about 100 hits an hour from all sorts of preverts. i changed the title, but somehow 'Smurf Porn " stuck to the search engine.So i posted this...click herelater today I'll post the picture under a different title.I hope you don't get a bunch of preverts over here, besides myself of course!

Was it this one? A guy is flying in a hot-air balloon and he's lost. He lowers himself over a cornfield and calls out to a woman. "Can you tell me where I am and where I'm headed?" "Sure," this woman says. "You are at 41 degrees, 2 minutes, and 14 seconds north, 144 degrees, 4 minutes, 19 seconds east; your at an altitude of 762 meters above sea level, and right now you're hovering, but you were on a vector of 234 degrees at 12 meters per second." "Amazing! Thanks! By the way, do you have Asperger's syndrome?" "I do!" The woman replayes. "How did you know?""Because everything you said is true, it's much more detailed than I need, and you told me in a way that's of no use to me at all." The woman frowns. "Huh. Are you a psychiatrist?" "I am," the man says. "But how the heck could you tell?" "You don't know where you are. You don't know where you're headed. You got where you are by blowing hot air. You put labels on people after asking a few questions, and you're in exactly the same spot you were in five minutes ago, but now, somehow it's my fault!"

Now I have to go see a site with Smurf-porn on it, by some guy called bulletholes. I bet it's nearly as disgusting as my "Tractor Porn" post.http://gritinthegears.blogspot.com/2009/04/tractor-porn.htmlI have no shame.

I once saw a circular bookshelf on a wall which had projections from the circumference for the books. I think the shelves were mounted to the wall inside of the circular boundary. Wow, 18 books is incredible, you are a sponge -- I have been reading, off and on, "The Monkey Wrench Gang" by Edward Albee for a month now. Took it to my girl's sister's wedding to pass the boring time until the food arrived.

Not so much a sponge as a head with a hole in the back of it ... so what goes in tends to just fall right on out. In a month or so, I won't be able to tell you what half of those books were about!

Umm...punch line? Well, it's sort of funny to have a psychiatrist diagnosing a person in his time of need and that 'diagnosed person' returning the deed - you know- calling the doctor out on his own issues ... maybe I thought it was funny because I tend to look at psychiatrists as having the golden keys to mental wellness and forgetting that they have their own baggage ...

I have met a few psychiatrists, (socially, y'know)... Some of them would agree with the suggestion that all psychiatrists are suffering from some diagnosable mental disorder.The problem is, that as soon as you start delving into the human mind, you start to realise that there isn't quite such a thing as 'normal'. And the more you swim away from the shores of what you once believed normal to be, the more you realise that you can't find your way back. There's no 'x' marks the spot on your map.

And when you're out in the world, watching passers by, and imagining they have better lives than yours, well, who knows. Maybe they're crazier than you, but just hide it well?Psychiatrists hate the thought of 'normal' people.

I think I found the idea quite reassuring. I mean, if nobody's quite sure where 'x' ought to be, well, it might just be me!

well, that's an interesting thought about 'x' possibly being me... I've always 'felt /known' since I was a kid that I was different than most other people: the way I thought, the way I felt, the way I interacted with the world was just ...different. My most oft-quoted line in therapy has been, "I'm a stranger in a strange land" thank you to Heinlein. So mostly what I've had to grapple with in life is being ok with the fact that I'm an alien. I do a pretty good imitation of normal when I have to (at work, soccer fields, school functions) but at heart, who I really am is ... different ....

The only Edward Abbey book I've attempted to read is Desert Solitaire and I didn't finish it, I must confess ...

Soub: Yep that's the one and he has a girl (of course) and two desert rats to help. They go way beyond what is necessary to disable the equipment and oil projects. Throwing a wrench down a drilling hole will not be effective; and pouring sand in the gas tank is easily fixed! But it's the thought that counts: destroy the machines!Red: I am not sure that remembering read books is the point. It may be the immediate pleasure of the reading and you self-impose having to remember the books, or movie, or conversation. I have found with my limited and sketchy memory that some thoughts fall into place when I need them -- sometimes not.

Desert Solitaire is a book you can pick up, page to anywhere in it, and get a taste of the desert and its denizens and plantlife. He is a master at describing what most people would describe as "nothing there, lets go home".

I like the idea that thoughts fall into place when you need them ... Abbey IS the master of describing the beauty of the desert. I think I tried to read it in my twenties - when I thought I had to read every book, in page order, all the way through ... I had very strict reading rules for myself. Obviously, now the rules have gone by the wayside (for the better).